It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patters can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviours.

However, to modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consiously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habits' routines, and find alternatives. You must know you have control and be self-conscious enough to use it -- and every chapter in this book is devoted to illustrating a different aspect of why that control is real.

Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits.

If you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they'll prove you right

If you believe you can change - if you make it a habit - the change becomes real.

As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything.

This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.